Audio guide for one night only exhibition "Exercises in Seeing" at Queen's Nails Projects in San Francisco, held entirely in the dark. The guide to the works in the show was written by poet/artist David Buuck, without having seen any of the artworks. The exhibition was curated by Post Brothers.

Post Brothers Present
EXERCISES IN SEEING
a one night only exhibition held entirely in the dark

Saturday, December 5th, 2009. 9 PM â 6 AM
Free and open to the public

Queen's Nails Projects
3191 Mission St, San Francisco, California.

A free audio guide written by David Buuck is available as a free
limited edition CD and can be downloaded for free.
The audio guide is performed by both Cassandra Smith and the author
and was recorded by Andrew Kenower.

Featuring projects by:

Jesse Ash (UK)
Gediminas Akstinas (LT)
Olivier Babin (FR)
Nina Beier (DK)
Francesca Bennett & Nicolas Matranga (CA/NL)
Raymond Boisjoly & Ryan Peter (CA)
Liudvikas Buklys (LT)
Deric Carner (US)
Etienne Chambaud (FR)
Brian Clifton (US)
Torreya Cummings (US)
Dina Danish (EG/NL)
Gintaras Didziapetris (LT)
Rosie Farrell (UK)
Isola & Norzi (IT)
Seth Lower (US)
Benoit Maire (FR)
Darius Miksys (LT)
Tegan Moore (CA)
Elena Narbutaite (LT)
Daniel Oates Kuhn (US/CA)
Kamau Amu Patton (US)
Mandla Reuter (DE)
Snowden Snowden (US)
Gareth Spor (US)
David Stein (US)
Daniel Turner (US)
Freek Wambacq (BE)
Jen Weih (CA)
Christine Wong Yap (US)

"Is not vision itself-seeing abysses?"
- Friedrich Nietzsche, Thus Spoke Zarathustra

One cannot be certain that they have seen the Exercises In Seeing
exhibition, but they may have heard about it from its numerous audio
guides, whose authors did not see it either. Apparently, the
exhibition escaped visual perception completely. Originally curated by
Valentinas Klimasauskas and Jonas Zakaitis, a series of artworks first
disappeared at Tulips & Roses in Vilnius, Lithuania, and then
subsequently vanished at The Royal Standard in Liverpool, UK. Now at
San Francisco's Queen's Nails Projects, the critical enterprise Post
Brothers has turned the lights off, inviting over 30 local and
international artists to test the aesthetic and conceptual potentials
of the dark. For one night only, Queen's Nails Projects will become
"terra incognita''âa dark space on the map, a blind spot in our vision
for impossible projections and amplified sensations. Here, rules are
nullified, orders undermined, negation celebrated.

An "inhibition" rather than an "exhibition," all of the works in this
paradoxical display are presented without the aid of gallery lighting.
Despite this predicament, the multidisciplinary projects elicit
alternative means of understanding through their visual lack; they
chart absence as much as presence, and their works linger in the gaps
of perception. Some of the artists have chosen to place an already
existing work in this cave, extending and compromising their artworkâs
critical capacity by purging its perceptual palette. Others have
contributed new projects that will disappear for their first
appearance; their very existence becomes dependent on blind encounter
within this treacherous void. Headless sculptures, encrypted
transmissions, and familiar objects vocalize missing truths, creating
a correspondence between the shadow and the real, stretching the
encounter of form to its lineaments. While some artists nefariously
throw caution in the wind, others push the limits of caution itself,
teasing our anxieties and trust. Forbearers range from surrealist and
conceptual propositions on the nature of art and perception, to the
use of negation in philosophy and science, to many of the works of
James Joyce (where lights going out allows characters to see clearly
for the first time), to the movie "Les Amants Du Pont-Neuf," where a
blind woman sneaks into the Louvre at night to experience the works
firsthand. In lieu of standard and instructive documentation, writer
David Buuck has provided an audio guide to orient the viewer. However,
as he has not seen any of the works, his directions through this
nocturnal vacuum may mislead the audience into dimensions unknown.

Exercises In Seeing will be an examination of darkness, a probing of
immateriality, an inquiry into invisibility, a venture in
non-knowledge, a scrutiny of sensitivity, an undertaking in
underexposure, a demonstration of disappearence, a movement into the
unknown, the (d)evolution of vision.

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